jake_lex:Weaver95: because one mistake when you're young and dumb should destroy your life forever, right?

The whole notion of there being a juvenile court system where kids who make dumb mistakes can be punished in a way that still gives them a chance later when they grow up is being completely dismantled.

When I have on my tinfoil hat, I connect that to the growing for-profit prison industry, but lately I'm thinking that more often when I don't have it on as well.

This asshat needs to be out of a job fast. The police can charge someone, but it's his decision to prosecute, and if he thinks this is warranted, then he needs to be tossed out on his ass.

I know someone who was threatened with charges for exactly this reason, in MASS. She was blackmailed when she was underage (she's much older and in college now, so I guess consider her an early test case). The guy threatened her, threatened to hurt her family, and the dipshiat feds got involved (because the perp was across state lines) and in the end, they terrorized her threatening production of CP charges for being blackmailed into taking photos of herself while the guy walked around free.

America has a really sick sense of what is right and wrong when it comes to sex.

Teens have sex, they watch porn, and they take dirty photos. Fix the farking law already and stop ruining lives over a set of tits on a cell phone. Jail the guys forcing girls/guys into this, and leave the kids alone (Hey, prosecutor, leave them kids alone!).

Back in the old days we did the same thing. The difference was that a Polaroid instant photo didn't get distributed instantly to millions of people. You took a pic for your loved one, and they kept it in their hope chest or locked diary. They didn't photocopy it a million times and give it to everyone else when they suspected you didn't love them enough, either.

I think we need to change the laws. Anyone past puberty who wants to take a picture of themselves should be free of the burden of child pornography laws. Any significant other of similar age who is the recipient of the image should likewise be off-limits for prosecutors.

We could make another new law that makes distributing naked pictures of yourself when you're under 18 years of age a misdemeanor, and the punishment should be a class that teaches just how dangerous it could be to give boyfriends/girlfriends naked pictures of yourself. No jail time. No sex offender list for teenagers. Just something to teach them the common sense rules for this situation.

I also think that we should establish a national age of consent, and that the age of consent should include not just the ability to choose for yourself whether or not to have intercourse, but also the legal right to choose whether or not you wish to pose nude. Personally, I'm all for sixteen being the national age of consent. Eighteen is silly-- Most relatively normal people have had sex by that time these days (and really, they did in the past, too).

It's just stupid that in Michigan, for example, a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old can have sex and it's perfectly legal, but in California that same relationship would lead to rape charges, sex offender listings, and the ruining of a young person's life.

The old, white, Christian folks who work so hard to keep these screwed-up sexuality laws on the books need to be ignored. They don't speak for the rest of us, obviously. I lost my virginity at sixteen, to a nineteen-year-old, and I have never had one moment of regret. She didn't damage me. But in today's world she would have been arrested in half the states in the union and called a child molester, when she was really my peer, my girlfriend, and someone I trusted and cared for enough to make a PERSONAL decision to share myself with her.

Protect teens by educating them about being human, not punishing them for acting human.

Weaver95:because one mistake when you're young and dumb should destroy your life forever, right?

The whole notion of there being a juvenile court system where kids who make dumb mistakes can be punished in a way that still gives them a chance later when they grow up is being completely dismantled.

When I have on my tinfoil hat, I connect that to the growing for-profit prison industry, but lately I'm thinking that more often when I don't have it on as well.

Treat it the way prostitution is treated in many areas (again, a lot of America misses out in this). Where I live, being a prostitute is not illegal, but using the services of one is. With this, the girls aren't arrested, but johns are, if the cops feel like enforcing the law (which is often iffy at best).

Same principle: make it a non-criminal act to produce if you're under 18... but still a crime to posses if you're over 18. Also, create a distinction between "set of tits that could belong to a 20 year old but could be underage" and actual CP, to prevent clogging up the system.

Kimothy:jake_lex: Weaver95: because one mistake when you're young and dumb should destroy your life forever, right?

The whole notion of there being a juvenile court system where kids who make dumb mistakes can be punished in a way that still gives them a chance later when they grow up is being completely dismantled.

When I have on my tinfoil hat, I connect that to the growing for-profit prison industry, but lately I'm thinking that more often when I don't have it on as well.

http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/school-prison-pipeline

It really exists. I've been teaching for 15 years and I can attest personally that putting police officers in schools and having for-profit prisons has ruined many, many lives.

We used to get suspended for a stupid fist fight. These kids get arrested, charged with assault, and then tried as adults. It's disgusting, it truly is.

And before that you were either told to cut the crap out or given gloves to finish the fight. I once had the former during freshman year, later that same year in a different school, a kid punched me in the face and then walked into the office to take his suspension (literally like that). Two days later, he was part of a small group of boys who broke into a house, raped and killed the elderly lady before taking her car. How's that for a very true and very extreme example? I have found old school-mates, I didn't even know back then, by that story. One them actually said "You were the guy Jeremy punched? I wondered who that was."

Mike Chewbacca:The cops downloaded everything of his and his friends' phones.

What the hell do the contents of their phones have to do with smoking pot? Oh, yeah. Getting arrested for anything is now free reign to go throw everything you own looking for unrelated crimes to prosecute you for. Silly me.

Is the law intended to protect people from the consequences of their actions? Yes, there are negative consequences for these sorts of actions, beyond the criminality. But when a large portion of the negative consequences comes from the illegality of the act, rather than due to the nature of the act itself (getting thrown on a sex offender list vs. people sharing the photos with recipients beyond the original intended recipient), perhaps the law is problematic. Fix the law, yet still encourage discussion that focuses the real consequences, the risks due to the nature of the technology, not the (ideally non-existent in a better world) risks due to the asinine law which should be changed. Although if the law still exists as-is, then discussion of its consequences is appropriate, but perhaps discussion too of what an idiotic law it is.

"They're going to face [prosecution], probably not jail time unless they've got bad records. But that's OK. They'll just be put on probation and they'll get to register as a sex offender, and that's a great box to check off on any job application," he continued. "You're going to lose jobs and relationships, and you'll spend the rest of your life as a registered sex offender."

This is what I consider narrow minded politics. The bugger knows that kids aren't fully responsible for the things they do yet, but is more than willing to throw the entire book at them and classify them as sex offenders -- even if they are not.

I figure that under today's laws, half of my graduating high school class would be on the sex offenders' list. Including the usual 'sterling students' who could do no wrong and were usually in class leadership positions.

It's apparently political suicide to go 'HEY! Wait a minute. Let's use some common sense here before damning someone to a life of shame and misery. Yeah he peed in the line of sight of a daycare center -- but it was at freakin' one in the morning, the place was closed up and empty and he was at a bar and drunk and in the parking lot.

Maybe it should dawn on them that 6 year olds don't know enough about sex to do anything actually sexual so if a 6 year old boy kisses a 6 year old girl on the cheek in school and neither her nor her parents get upset -- the government should not mandate the boy be expelled for a SEXUAL offense.

Plus, as much as many will hate to hear this and others will vehemently inform me I'm full of shiat: having cartoon kiddy porn or teen porn (cartoon also) on a computer does NOT mean the guy will EVER actually act on such urges.

Many of you have acceptable adult fantasies a lot of us would recoil in horror over, but while they steam you up -- you'll NEVER act on them. Just fantasize. Quite a high percentage of you will get all turned on just by seeing others do the acts. A small percentage find such acts fascinating, but would not want to perform them in person.

So, you need to be able to determine who is a real perv and who is not.

There's another group who would just love to see some banned perverted act -- at least once -- and download it, but never act on it. They might even delete it afterwards -- forgetting that traces are left that can be used against them. Maybe they'll keep it to have a guilty, forbidden thrill later on, even though getting caught with it means society will consider them a monster.

One more group prefers assorted seeing sexually oriented materials in cartoon form, finding the 'real deal' unsatisfactory. Like guys who get all steamed up on torture and disembowelment cartoons but who would never do the stuff for real because they actually would NOT want to hurt a real girl.

That plus the assorted laws forbidding it which all have one of two conclusions if caught: life in prison or death.

We didn't have 'sexting' in my day, but we did have Polaroid Cameras. You think a lot of us teens passed around instant pictures of birds and butterflies? There was no internet, but us kids knew how to get to those hard core books kept behind the counter at magazine stands. It was very hard to trace a call back then, so you can imagine the heated, whispered calls some unsuspecting girls received. Usually from a pay phone.

We also had portable tape recorders the size of a paper back book. You think they were used just to record music?

Guys who got their hands on a genuine porn book passed it around until the pages wore out. When copy machines popped up -- they made copies.

Back then, in most places, it was illegal to buy or own hard core porn, but we got it anyway.

I was a pre-teen when the first scandalous bikini showed up on our beaches and suddenly discovered I didn't want to stop looking at the young woman wearing it. Laws to ban it failed. (Thank goodness.)

So, our law makers and enforcers need to develop common sense when dealing with sex offenses. There are much fewer REAL pervs out there than the media and the politicians would have you believe. However, since they now arrest nearly everyone for anything even remotely sexual and slap the Sex Offender charge on them, it seems like they're coming out from under every rock and bush around.

We had kids who killed people in my day. None were sentenced as adults. None spent life in prison. An exception was made for their age and the expected stupidity that accompanied it. Very few, depending on their crime, spent more than 5 years in an institution.

Now, we have this technology that has opened up avenues no one was prepared for. Leaders are scrambling to cope with it by creating often poorly thought out laws -- the majority of which will not be adjusted or repaired for decades.

Remember, if you're a new Dad and your wife takes a picture of you bathing in the tub with your toddler -- as Dad's will do and have done for centuries -- you can be considered a sex offender. Better wear swim trunks. Better yet, wear jeans.

The sex drive, especially during puberty, never mixes very well with common sense, but the majority of the people do not commit criminal acts -- unless everything related to sex becomes a crime.

And people wonder why kids have no respect for authority."if you do _____ it could harm you. So to keep you from doing it we're going to make sure THAT IT RUINES YOUR LIFE FOREVER!!!" Same deal with drugs, It's almost like it has less to do with protecting anyone than it does petty authoritarian control.

WhoopAssWayne:I just hear constantly on fark from people who believe our government should be in charge of almost everything

The issue in this case has nothing to do with liberal or conservative, but rather being authoritarian. Which is actually something liberals in general aren't too big on. Come to think of it conservatives aren't either, not that you'd be able to tell by looking at most people who call themselves conservatives these days.

problems with this: What if some 15 year old for whatever reason decides to ruin your life by emailing you pictures of themselves. We have seen stories on fark where someone has just made up rape accusations because they were pissed with a teacher about a grade. This doesn't seem all that far fetched. If it is strict liability 15 year olds suddenly have a pretty powerful weapon against whomever they don't like that is above 18.

Additionally, what if they are pictures of yourself? As soon as you hit that age threshold suddenly you are a criminal.

Less problems with this than the current system. The blackmail example/false rape accusations - yes, that happens, and it will have to be sorted out in court. Some people will always abuse the system. That's no argument to keep the current law.

You should always be exempt from possessing photos of yourself, at any age. The same way my grandma should not be charged for that photo of me streaking through the backyard when I was 5.

Child pornography laws were created to prevent adults from exploiting children, not for preventing adolescents from being adolescents.

As with three-strikes laws, zero-tolerance policies, and the like, this is more evidence that the distinction between the letter and the spirit of the law is disappearing. We no longer trust ourselves or our public servants to interpret the law in a sensible, humane, and rational way, so we insist on draconian, bureaucratic, black-and-white enforcement.

This is, unfortunately, a bipartisan trend. Conservatives are afraid that liberal judges will coddle criminals, liberals fear that conservative judges will show favoritism toward defendants from privileged backgrounds, and moralists of all stripes are convinced that we can recreate the Garden of Eden once we have locked up all the sinners. Meanwhile, the growing for-profit prison industry and its lobbyists play both sides against the middle like a virtuoso.

problems with this: What if some 15 year old for whatever reason decides to ruin your life by emailing you pictures of themselves. We have seen stories on fark where someone has just made up rape accusations because they were pissed with a teacher about a grade. This doesn't seem all that far fetched. If it is strict liability 15 year olds suddenly have a pretty powerful weapon against whomever they don't like that is above 18.

Additionally, what if they are pictures of yourself? As soon as you hit that age threshold suddenly you are a criminal.

And that's why as soon as my young (male) cousin got a phone with a camera and a data plan, my other cousin (his older sister) told him bluntly, "Do NOT take pictures of your junk and send it around to your friends!" And then she showed him a bunch of news articles about 15-year-olds charged with felony child porn because they took pics of their tits.

Three weeks ago that cousin (now 14) was arrested for marijuana possession. The cops downloaded everything of his and his friends' phones. They found plenty of adult photos, but no child porn. I guess he paid attention to THAT particular warning. Apparently he couldn't handle not smoking pot, though.

Flagg99:Ed Grubermann: The whole point of child porn laws was to protect children from being sexually exploited by adults. Teens sending pictures of themselves to each-other isn't the same thing. And these assholes know it.

For fark's sake, people need to use their brains.

The clowns in the judicial system lack anything resembling brains, or common sense.

How dare the DA enforce a statute as written...it's an OUTRAGE!!!!

/the law needs to be updated//won't be, until some state senator's kid is busted

Whenever I hear of stories involving teen sexting and such I think of the role Paris Hilton had in making it acceptable. Maybe it's a stretch, but kids saw quite clearly that putting amateur porn videos of yourself not only won't get you in trouble but may make you absurdly popular. Her sex tapes were the first public thing she did and afterward she got TV and movie roles, her media presence skyrocketed and she cashed in on her image to endorse products. Her family got richer and little girls in particular were encouraged to do something unfathomable not even a decade ago.

Nem Wan:The DA is telling how it is. It's the legislature's job to fix it. Everyone saying the DA should use discretion is perhaps forgetting that that's a problem: the law shouldn't be what a DA says it is. In theory we could make everything illegal and leave it to DAs to decide who's bad.

Checks and balances.

One balance on bad laws, or poorly worded laws, is prosecutors refusing to prosecute under them.

Part of the problem is that our legislators make the laws, but they don't think of the exact legal implications. They don't read the exact text, that's written by a staffer (or a lobbyist). They may not understand the legalese even if they do read it. They vote based on being able to say they were tough on crime, or tough on drugs, or whatever helps them get re-elected.

I just hear constantly on fark from people who believe our government should be in charge of almost everything, and I don't believe that creates a healthy and fair society. Centralizing on a system with no accountability is a recipe for disaster in my view. If you'd like to argue that we should put the blue and red flags down for a bit and figure out a way to make government accountable, hey, I'm down for that.

In theory "government" = "the people". The government, of some sort of other, is going to run everything. You're just choosing whether you want a unified, federal government involved, or a local government, and either way, both of those are supposedly run by your peers and you.

Defeating "government" isn't going to fix ANY of these problems. Change of heart among the populace is the only way. You aren't fighting some other, some vague entity without a face, you're fighting yourself and your own neighbors.

I just hear constantly on fark from people who believe our government should be in charge of almost everything, and I don't believe that creates a healthy and fair society. Centralizing on a system with no accountability is a recipe for disaster in my view. If you'd like to argue that we should put the blue and red flags down for a bit and figure out a way to make government accountable, hey, I'm down for that.

Just so long as you realize that the last few republicans you voted into office also worked to increase the size and power of the federal government. You should be just as upset with neoconservatives as you are with liberals.

I just hear constantly on fark from people who believe our government should be in charge of almost everything, and I don't believe that creates a healthy and fair society. Centralizing on a system with no accountability is a recipe for disaster in my view. If you'd like to argue that we should put the blue and red flags down for a bit and figure out a way to make government accountable, hey, I'm down for that.

You just keep on fighting those imaginary Liberals you pretend to see around you.

Pincy:This country has gone off the farking deep end as far as pornography is concerned. Yes, children exploited being sexually exploited by adults should be illegal. High school kids sending their friends naked pictures of themselves not so much.

Well, now, who is actually preying on the young in this FUBAR?That is correct, the DA and the "legal system" have made themselves the predators.

Would be BIZZARO WORLD if it were not the coming norm in this New Order.

Let's go back in history a couple hundred years or more. We as an adult society have paintings and statues of nude or partially nude adults in museums and other public places. Then there's the men's magazine business that's been around over 50 years. And, let's not forget strip clubs. The case could be made that there seems to be a double standard, where we want to hold children to a higher stndard than adults!

WhoopAssWayne:I just hear constantly on fark from people who believe our government should be in charge of almost everything, and I don't believe that creates a healthy and fair society.

Well, it avoids some problems. State to State laws about, say, gay marriage.

It is possible for the government to do most of it. No killing, no stealing, etc.

Cover the big bases as such(the big universal laws as above), and then, stop the states from doing things like "no gays" "no fatties" "let's have insane alcohol and tobacco taxes" Let bars choose if people get to smoke there, but not hospitals and such, let people buy a large soda, etc. A very large problem that we're facing now. It would take the federal government to step in and say, "But the fark OUT of their lives, you farking yokel morons!" And we could get over a large part of our social problems.

This social arena where democracy fails, the minority always loses, and everyone is part of a minority when it comes to one ideal or another. This is precisely the power that should NOT be in the state's hands, yet, this is the majority of what goes on in each state. Micromanagement of people's lives and hence a reduction of their liberties.

Then work with the state itself to regulate trade and business practices that are unique to that region. But fair and to the benefit of the US as a whole.

It can be done. However, it is very unlikely. I don't the think federal goverment could practice such restraint, however. Our federal government is as prone to asshattery and farkuppery as any state or local government, though they are reigned in a bit more because the whole populace can pressure them. Don't have that control with states, hence the widely varying laws state to state.

I just hear constantly on fark from people who believe our government should be in charge of almost everything, and I don't believe that creates a healthy and fair society. Centralizing on a system with no accountability is a recipe for disaster in my view. If you'd like to argue that we should put the blue and red flags down for a bit and figure out a way to make government accountable, hey, I'm down for that.

it is truly sick and twisted to compare the innocent hijinx of children to pornography. to send out the message that an image of your natural self is bad and negative clearly illustrates how morally corrupt some peoples minds are.

God forbid this fellow finds out 7th graders shower together after Gym class, his farking head will asplode.

Flagg99:Ed Grubermann: potterydove: Aren't children the protected class of child pornography laws? I'm not quite understanding how you could charge the victim of the crime with the crime...

Ever hear of that 13-year old girl and the twelve-year old boy in Utah being charged with felony child molestation charges because he got her pregnant? No, really. Both were charged. The state supreme court later tossed the convictions out.

Convictions?? fark that's terrifying... never should have gone to trial, but for there to actually be convictions show's a complete lack of understanding of sexuality, human nature, common sense, and the law.

It should have gone to Family Services, not to the police. The problem is that Utah passed a law making it illegal for anyone, regardless of age, to have sex with someone under 14. Like most of these badly written laws, they didn't think their cunning plan all the way through.

Flagg99:Gergesa: Flagg99: but still a crime to posses if you're over 18

problems with this: What if some 15 year old for whatever reason decides to ruin your life by emailing you pictures of themselves. We have seen stories on fark where someone has just made up rape accusations because they were pissed with a teacher about a grade. This doesn't seem all that far fetched. If it is strict liability 15 year olds suddenly have a pretty powerful weapon against whomever they don't like that is above 18.

Additionally, what if they are pictures of yourself? As soon as you hit that age threshold suddenly you are a criminal.

Less problems with this than the current system. The blackmail example/false rape accusations - yes, that happens, and it will have to be sorted out in court. Some people will always abuse the system. That's no argument to keep the current law.

You should always be exempt from possessing photos of yourself, at any age. The same way my grandma should not be charged for that photo of me streaking through the backyard when I was 5.

Exactly. There are pictures of me at about 4 years old sitting naked in a big old sink full of water. How does one determine if it's child porn or a wholesome, cute family photo? I'm certain several DAs out there could have my parents prosecuted for our family album if they stuck to the letter of the law.

Ed Grubermann:potterydove: Aren't children the protected class of child pornography laws? I'm not quite understanding how you could charge the victim of the crime with the crime...

Ever hear of that 13-year old girl and the twelve-year old boy in Utah being charged with felony child molestation charges because he got her pregnant? No, really. Both were charged. The state supreme court later tossed the convictions out.

Convictions?? fark that's terrifying... never should have gone to trial, but for there to actually be convictions show's a complete lack of understanding of sexuality, human nature, common sense, and the law.

ModernLuddite:Flagg99: This asshat needs to be out of a job fast. The police can charge someone, but it's his decision to prosecute, and if he thinks this is warranted, then he needs to be tossed out on his ass.

I know someone who was threatened with charges for exactly this reason, in MASS. She was blackmailed when she was underage (she's much older and in college now, so I guess consider her an early test case). The guy threatened her, threatened to hurt her family, and the dipshiat feds got involved (because the perp was across state lines) and in the end, they terrorized her threatening production of CP charges for being blackmailed into taking photos of herself while the guy walked around free.

America has a really sick sense of what is right and wrong when it comes to sex.

Teens have sex, they watch porn, and they take dirty photos. Fix the farking law already and stop ruining lives over a set of tits on a cell phone. Jail the guys forcing girls/guys into this, and leave the kids alone (Hey, prosecutor, leave them kids alone!).

How do you "force" someone to do anything over a computer?

Maybe teach kids to turn the farking thing OFF.

I actually put "threatened to hurt her family" in the original post, so please read next time. She was 12 and fully believed he would show up and hurt them. "Turning it off" wasn't that simple, at least not in her mind. When she got older she reported him and then feds pulled their douchebag act. I felt terrible because I actually encouraged her to report him when she told me/even gave her the link to the ICE website that she used.

DAs can do whatever the f*** they want to do in this country, and there's not a d*** thing you do about it. Why do liberals want to centralize all power in the government's hands in this country, with zero accountability? I mean none. At least with corporations and other institutions you have the courts as a last resort, as flawed and in need of reform as that process may be. But a DA, a corrupt cop, the IRS? Bend over and take it, citizen.

Ed Grubermann:The whole point of child porn laws was to protect children from being sexually exploited by adults. Teens sending pictures of themselves to each-other isn't the same thing. And these assholes know it.

For fark's sake, people need to use their brains.

The clowns in the judicial system lack anything resembling brains, or common sense.

jake_lex:Weaver95: because one mistake when you're young and dumb should destroy your life forever, right?

The whole notion of there being a juvenile court system where kids who make dumb mistakes can be punished in a way that still gives them a chance later when they grow up is being completely dismantled.

When I have on my tinfoil hat, I connect that to the growing for-profit prison industry, but lately I'm thinking that more often when I don't have it on as well.